On a Saturday afternoon in August, Bosun Tijani stood before Nigeria’s parliament and read from a lectern. It was a job interview of sorts: After greeting the assembled senators, as well as President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, he launched into explaining why he was the ideal candidate to be Nigeria’s next minister of communications, innovation, and digital economy.
A portrait of patriotism in the Nigerian national colors, with a green cap and white shirt, Tijani compressed an impressive resume into seven minutes, covering achievements that had attracted the attention of globally recognized tech figures. He is something of a celebrity in Nigeria’s tech space: When Mark Zuckerberg made a trip to Lagos in 2016, Tijani showed the Meta CEO around Yaba, the city’s tech neighborhood. Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of X (previously known as Twitter), similarly met Tijani when he visited Nigeria in 2019, and again in the wake of the #EndSars protests in 2021. Earlier this year, Tijani interviewed Bill Gates onstage at a youth innovation event.
“I have spent the last 15 years contributing to deepening the technology ecosystem in Nigeria and Africa, through extensive collaboration with some of the world’s largest technology companies and development agencies,” Tijani told the parliament, his words also broadcast live on national TV. “It is my conviction that we must prioritize the role of technology and innovation in raising the productivity level across our economy.”
But the lawmakers in the room seemed uninterested in Tijani’s professional qualifications. Instead, a number of them took issue with something they felt was unbefitting of a government minister: his X account.
Even before the screening, Tijani’s account had caused furor. Both supporters and opponents of the government dug up old posts in which he had criticized Nigeria’s lawmakers and government officials — including Tinubu — even during the election campaigns. He once described the Aso Rock Villa seat of government in the capital city of Abuja as “AssholeRock”. At the hearing, a senator quoted from one of Tijani’s 2019 tweets: “‘Nigeria’ is a bloody expensive tag to have against your name. Leave patriotism for a minute — that tag is a bloody waste of energy.”
Rumbles of disapproval filled the chamber.
Tijani explained to the legislators that the tweet referred to an unpleasant experience he’d had while applying for a visa with his Nigerian passport. The senator felt the post demonstrated that Tijani “does not appreciate the Nigerian passport and Nigeria as a nation.”
“Do you still believe in what you said in 2019, or have you changed your mind about the country?” he asked, throwing his arms up in apparent frustration.
Tijani apologized, profusely. He spoke passionately about his work representing Nigeria on the global tech stage and supporting young people interested in the industry. “I ask that in the process of accepting my apology, you look at the undertone of everything I said,” he said in a soft voice, hands behind his back and head slightly bowed. “I did not say it to spite. I said it out of frustration and love.”
Eventually, the president of the Senate accepted Tijani’s apology, and he was granted permission to “take a bow” and leave the room. Tijani had passed the screening process, and completed the transformation from tech entrepreneur to the country’s preeminent tech policymaker.
“I think that the importance and weight that needs to be given to the industry has finally arrived.”
In an administration mostly populated with career politicians, tired names, and elderly faces, Tijani, 46, has been hailed by local media and tech insiders as an unusual but well-suited candidate for the digital economy position. The role, first created in 2011 and reinvented in 2019, was previously filled by Isa Pantami, an IT professor, Islamic cleric, and politician; and Adebayo Shittu, a lawyer. For many, Tijani’s appointment signaled a welcome change. He came directly from the tech sector, and he represented an attitude rooted in innovation.
His nomination generated a flood of comments on X, where Tijani has more than 100,000 followers. “Bosun” was a trending topic in Nigeria for days. Hailing the move as a “Tech Ecosystem Breakthrough,” local business outlet Smepeaks wrote, “Nigeria’s tech ecosystem has gained a seat at the highest level of government influence.”
“I think that the importance and weight that needs to be given to the industry has finally arrived,” Biola Alabi, general partner at Acasia Ventures, which invests in early-stage startups across Africa, told Rest of World. “As someone who has been an investor himself, as someone who has been a builder, as someone who has been at the forefront of innovation and incubating some of the companies we see today, he has that firsthand knowledge and can bring that to incorporate in almost every aspect of the Nigerian government.”
One of Tijani’s key ambitions is to make Nigeria a bigger exporter of tech products, services, and talent. This includes a heavily publicized plan to train 3 million people in tech skills over the next four years. He starts from a solid foundation. Nigeria is a global tech powerhouse: Companies like OPay, Flutterwave, and Jumia are among those to have achieved “unicorn” valuations of over $1 billion, and global payment company Stripe’s acquisition of Nigerian fintech Paystack in 2020 was seen as a watershed moment for the country’s startups.
Still, Tijani is stepping into the role at a challenging time. Nigeria’s tech sector, like those across the world, was affected by the tech downturn at the end of 2022 and start of 2023, with layoffs at tech companies and cuts to startup funding. Meanwhile, access and skills remain an issue: Only about half of Nigerians have internet access, and internet data is among the most unaffordable in the world.
And Tijani is entering an administration dogged by claims of fraud. Nigeria’s divisive presidential elections last February were marred by reports of irregularities, which led many voters to question the announcement of Tinubu as the winner. The majority of young and progressive Nigerians had openly backed the outlier candidate, Peter Obi, who received overwhelming support on social media before and after the elections when he appealed the results.
Tijani — who had appeared to scorn Tinubu on his X account — was caught in the middle. When he joined Tinubu’s administration, some accused him of being a sellout. A number of leading voices in the tech industry and political space told Rest of World they were impressed with Tijani’s appointment but unwilling to comment for this story, because it could give legitimacy to the current government.
In a meeting with Rest of World just two months after taking on his new role, at his new office in Abuja, Tijani appeared to acknowledge the struggle to prove himself in the public sector, while deeply embedded in a contentious administration.
“I think part of the challenges as a new leader is, how do we intentionally create trust between public officials and the people that they lead?” he said. “I think that’s a major problem because, over time, that trust has been eroded, so there’s a sort of suspicion among the people that anything coming from public leaders or public officials should never be trusted.”
Few people are as recognizable in the Nigerian tech space as Bosun Tijani. Tall, bearded, and soft-spoken, Tijani spent his early years in the southwestern town of Agege — a densely populated suburb of Lagos State — where his father was a baker and one of the producers of Agege bread, an iconic mini loaf still popular in the capital city.
After graduating with a diploma in computer science and a degree in economics from the University of Jos in north-central Nigeria in the late ’90s, Tijani moved back to Lagos. There, he got a job at a company called Delivery King, an online food delivery startup. But the internet was still new and rare in Nigeria, with just 0.1% of the population connected and only dial-up connections available in a country where phone lines were notoriously iffy. The customer base was limited to the few in Lagos who had internet access, and Delivery King eventually shut down.
“The company didn’t last, of course, because we were way ahead of its time,” Tijani told Rest of World. “Delivery of food is largely a numbers business … The size of the market was too small.”
Tijani moved on to various tech-related roles in Switzerland and the U.K., before returning to Nigeria in 2010. That year, he co-founded the Co-Creation Hub (CcHub). First established in the district of Yaba, between the Lagos mainland and island, CcHub is a coworking space and startup incubator focused on solving social issues. Now with offices in Kigali, Nairobi, and Windhoek, it offers funding, training, and networking to local entrepreneurs. Most of the initial funding for CcHub came from international donors, including the Sainsbury family in the U.K. and the Schmidt Family Foundation in the U.S. (Disclosure: Rest of World’s founder and CEO Sophie Schmidt made two donations to CcHub between 2011 and 2013 through the Schmidt Family Foundation.) But it also had local support, particularly from telecom company MainOne in Lagos, which provides free internet to the project. Tijani cites MainOne’s founder, Funke Opeke, as a major influence.
In his position at CcHub, Tijani had a perfect vantage point from which to view the evolution of Nigeria’s tech scene. Over the decade following CcHub’s founding in 2010, the sector blossomed. The tech community in Yaba grew and was soon referred to as the Silicon Valley of Nigeria. It became a base for the likes of tech talent recruitment company Andela, which received a $24 million investment from Zuckerberg in early 2016.
Nigeria was the most popular tech startup investment destination in Africa between 2015 and 2022, according to a report by research company Disrupt Africa. CcHub itself claims to have supported more than 95 early-stage ventures through its incubator, as well as run STEM initiatives in schools and other social projects.
“I think the biggest priority is understanding that nations can only be great when they prioritize the use of technology.”
Tijani’s star rose with that of the tech scene. “CcHub was popular but at first nobody paid attention to who owned it,” Joseph Olaoluwa, a senior reporter with online publication TechCabal, told Rest of World. “The media gave him coverage as one of the pioneers of the tech industry … as a campaigner, someone who was trying to push digitization in Nigeria.”
Then, in 2016, Zuckerberg made CcHub his first port of call during his surprise visit to Lagos. The Meta CEO’s trip was hailed as something of a seal of approval that helped attract more global investors, and the tech scene continued to flourish. In 2021, there was a boom in venture capital funding, with Nigerian startups receiving a total of $1.8 billion that year, according to a report by Partech Ventures.
“I like him a lot, Mark Zuckerberg,” Tijani told Rest of World. “I tend to look at the way he approaches life, the way he has been in difficult situations. The world has looked for his head so many times.”
In the past couple of years, world events have taken a toll on Nigeria’s tech scene. Following the Covid-19 pandemic, the global tech downturn saw VC startup funding decrease — including in Nigeria. In 2022, the country’s startups received $1.2 billion, down 36% from the previous year. But this dip has been less pronounced across Africa than other regions, and tech is still largely seen as having big potential.
“I think the biggest priority is understanding that nations can only be great when they prioritize the use of technology,” Tijani said. “So, the biggest priority for me is ‘how do we help Nigeria use technology smarter and better so that we can amplify what is possible in the country to drive inclusive goals through technology?’”
Prior to his appointment as minister, Tijani had never met President Tinubu. In a country where getting a foot on the political ladder usually depends on having “godfathers” — or influential politicians on your side — Tijani boasts that he doesn’t have any.
“I’m not here because I’m connected to known politicians,” he said. “There were people that saw my work and recommended me, but they didn’t recommend me on the basis that I was part of a political party. In fact, I was notorious for always criticizing politicians and public officials. But one thing I was also notorious for was that I cared deeply about society.”
Tijani’s nomination was swiftly met with open resistance from many supporters and opposers of the Tinubu administration and sparked a plethora of columns and commentary across the country’s media and on social platforms.
Tijani was not public about any political affiliations during the elections, but many Nigerians assumed he was an Obi supporter, like many of the young and progressive Nigerians fed up with the status quo. “Bosun Tijani’s ministerial nomination has triggered a moral, emotional and logical debate in Nigeria’s tech space,” summarized an article in TechCity, an online magazine. Tinubu supporters felt Tijani’s previous criticism of the government made him unfit to join it; some posted on X that they were gathering screenshots of his “toxic” posts to send to their local representative. Tinubu’s detractors, meanwhile, felt it was hypocritical for Tijani to take a role with a government he had spoken against.
“I’m not here because I’m connected to known politicians.”
As the controversy raged, J. J. Omojuwa, a popular influencer with more than 1.2 million X followers and author of the book, Digital: The New Code of Wealth, called on Nigerians to allow pragmatism over idealism. Tijani, he wrote in a blog post, represented “the most critical and most powerful force of change in the world today. The world of technology and its capacity for disruption.”
“The Nigerian system can be ruthless,” Omojuwa continued. “Many microcosms of this vast country want representation, but for reasons beyond most of us and Nigeria itself, not everyone can be represented per time. When you have one of your own represented? Take it.”
Tijani told Rest of World he’d always wanted to be a public leader. “When I started CcHub and I saw the impact, I figured that if I wanted my impact to go further, that it will be stronger when you’re in government because you can influence things better,” he said.
He is circumspect about his controversial posts on X, which have since inspired several columns cautioning young Nigerians about the dangers of careless social media posts. “Could all that have been said better? Well, probably,” he said. “But what’s the percentage of Nigerians that will say the same thing or that are saying the same thing today? Will you then punish me for being passionate, for wanting the best for my country, because I was rude to you?”
Tijani is now eager to prove himself. The Ministry of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy was created to “leverage the power of information and communication technology (ICT) to fuel job creation, ignite economic growth, and illuminate the path to transparent governance.” It also oversees a number of key government agencies, such as the NCC, which regulates mobile phone services, and the Nipost, responsible for postal services — and is tasked with attracting foreign investment into Nigeria’s digital economy.
At an event to mark the country’s Independence Day in October, Tijani laid out key areas that his department will focus on, and published the blueprint in a 31-page document titled “Accelerating our Collective Prosperity through Technical Efficiency.”
One area is access. “Accessibility in terms of being able to afford and use technology, and also accessibility in terms of being able to participate in the process of building either the computer itself or the application that you use,” Tijani told Rest of World.
In January 2023, there were 122.5 million internet users in Nigeria, approximately half the population, according to digital trend analysis site DataReportal. But while 95% of Nigerians between the ages of 15 and 35 years can browse the internet, only four out of 10 have word-processing skills, according to a 2020 report by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics. Nigeria also has some of the most unaffordable internet in the world, ranking 119th out of 121 countries in a September 2023 survey by the VPN provider Surfshark: Nigerians have to work for one and a half days (over 35 hours) to afford the cheapest broadband internet package in the country, compared to people in Romania — which had the cheapest broadband of the countries surveyed — who have to work for only 18 minutes to afford theirs. There’s an imbalance in access, too: Approximately 61% of Nigerians in urban areas own a smartphone, compared to 40% in rural areas.
Tijani’s plan to address this includes increasing digital literacy through schools and expanding internet access in rural areas. “Nigeria has to lay 95,000 kilometers of fiber optic cables,” he said. “Under this government, we want to ensure that we achieve a significant number of that. I think we have about 30,000 kilometers done so far. We want to push that number.”
Another priority in Tijani’s plan is to incubate local talent, including by pushing digital skills and providing financial support to entrepreneurs. A key goal is to increase the number of Nigerian technology companies that are exporting products, services, and talent to the rest of Africa and the world. “At the minute, Nigeria is rated second to last when it comes to ECI [economic complexity index] trading technology,” he said. “That means we are not considered to be a technology-exporting country. We want to change that.”
As part of this push, the government has a plan to equip 3 million Nigerians with tech skills over the next four years. The goal is for half of those people to find work at Nigerian companies and the other half to work remotely for international companies.
“You can’t do much with technology if you don’t have the know-how,” Tijani said. “We’re going to invest heavily into producing a lot of tech talents and our goal is to be able to retain a significant number of them but also export the rest of them to the world. By exporting, we don’t mean shipping them away, but giving people the opportunity to be remote workers for technology companies.”
122.5 million The number of internet users in Nigeria, as of January 2023.
DataReportal
He also announced that the government will award 5 million naira (around $6,000) each to 45 startups and researchers focusing on artificial intelligence, and shared an additional plan to help Nigerian startups raise their combined yearly funding rounds to $5 billion by 2027.
Investor Damilola Teidi, 33, has faith in Tijani. Now part of the leadership team at Ventures Platform in Lagos, which invests in startups across Africa, she worked with CcHub for about eight years, heading various local and international projects. “I don’t have particularly that fear of how we’re going to get there because I’ve seen him work to pull funds and pull resources where it’s needed and to ensure that value is given to all the key players,” she told Rest of World. “Now it might be a different ball game, of course, with government, but I’ve seen it on a private scale.”
Gbenga Sesan, executive director of Paradigm Initiative, a pan-African nonprofit working on digital rights and inclusion, was more skeptical. “There have been promises for many years and this may be a different minister but it is the same government,” he told Rest of World over the phone from Uyo in southeastern Nigeria. “When the real test comes is when political pressure comes as usual on the president to divert funds to other projects that are seen to be able to help win elections … Bosun has said [the digital economy] is Tinubu’s priority, but is it really?”
Alabi, the partner at Acasia Ventures, expects Tijani will face a number of hurdles, including a paucity of infrastructure, difficulty in attracting global investors at a time of economic slowdown, and the challenge of creating incentives for local investment, which so far seems focused on traditional industries like real estate, oil, and gas.
“The biggest hurdle is infrastructure — getting the right infrastructure built, getting internet to people in a way that is affordable,” she said. “We need to connect people who are not in urban cities to the global economy, to the world, to the internet. The minute I leave Lagos, I’m already having challenges with connectivity. Even in Lagos, I have challenges with connectivity.”
After just six weeks in office, Tijani appeared sympathetic to Tinubu.
“I’m learning every day that there’s a long list of people who want the best for society in government,” he said. “The first time I met [Tinubu], he was sincere. He had the choice and power to stop my screening, but he didn’t because he wanted someone that on paper could do the work and that’s what he saw.”
He’d also come to appreciate a key challenge: balancing “doing what is right in the long term with doing what people need in the immediate.”
Tijani believes the worlds of tech and government are similar in their power to influence society. “But I think the luxury we have in tech is that we can just quietly take a decision without worrying too much about the consequences,” he said. Though the public sector has the same capabilities, “there’s systems in place to check you and ask you whether you’re thinking thoroughly about what you’re doing, and that system I believe is where the reputation of being old-school and slow is coming from.”
Since taking office, Tijani has found himself a target of criticism on X, including claims about the size of his motor convoy (which he said were false). Nigerian government officials are infamous for their convoys of cars, with armed security perched out of windows, ready to bark threats at drivers who block their way. Tijani took to X to defend himself, but was not surprised that many did not seem to believe him.
“That’s the kind of thing that people generally will believe without questioning,” he said. “Historically, if I saw that [his defense] before being in government, I probably wouldn’t believe.”
Despite the social media griping, Tijani is still viewed as a celebrity in the tech world. At a workshop in Abuja in September — organized by the Ministry of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, and attended by local video gamers — Tijani took the stage. Dressed in a baby blue, long-sleeved top and matching trousers, he stepped away from the podium and moved closer to the dozen or so young men and women gathered in the hotel conference room, their eyes following him.
“I am one of you,” Tijani said. “In this country, it is unusual to have someone from among you at this side of the divide.”
Over the next 12 minutes, he offered a vision of a Nigeria where the gaming sector was as impactful as the country’s music and film industries, which have birthed a stream of global hits.
Enthusiastic applause followed. Tijani later posed for a group photo, where he was positioned front and center. Afterwards, attendees poured out of the door with him. Tijani patiently granted an audience to each person until one of his entourage intervened, ushering him away from the crowd and into his waiting convoy of black jeeps with tinted windows.
Later that day, he was the guest of honor at the app launch of an African bank, where he sat through long-winded observations of protocol and ceremony before taking the stage to speak about the need for more Nigerians to become part of the formal economy by opening bank accounts.
“When you think about it really, the way it’s been set up, there’s a high chance that, as a minister, you don’t get much done because there’s a whole lot of meetings you’re doing,” Tijani told Rest of World later, back in his office. “To actually sit down and get the work done, you have to be extremely intentional, and ensure that your team is also not distracted. So, you have to create time for it. Because I’m still just five or six weeks into the job, I’m still learning how to strike a balance.”
However, he also said that a large part of his role in government is about selling hope — which makes his public appearances just as important as the policy work. “You know, that’s your job as leaders. Not only should you say what you’re doing, but you should also be inspiring,” he said. “No matter what you’re going through, you have to also be able to remind yourself that when you turn up, you have to inspire. That’s your biggest job.”
